Best Taiwanese New York 2011 - Taiwanese Specialties

Taiwanese cuisine is just coming into its own in the Five Boroughs. As Taiwanese restaurateurs have been relieved of the necessity of cooking everyone else's food by the influx of immigrants from many regions of China, they've been freed up to concentrate more on their own. Taiwanese Specialties has changed hands several times, but this place just south of the LIE tracks offers the city's most elegant take on a playful cuisine that includes lots of seafood, pork belly, soups, offal, and—perhaps awfulest of all—stinky tofu. And don't miss the wonderfully strange Taiwanese meatball, or the dish usually referred to as "chicken neck"—here called by the more mundane name of pork roll. 84-02 Broadway, Queens, 718-429-4818 (11373)